Write it down!
Have you ever gotten an idea that could improve lives, drive a company, shift a market, even make billions, and then forgotten it entirely?
How do you know?
Ever get just a fragment of an idea that could have led to any of the above? Again, if you don’t recall, how do you know?
As much as I believe in the “blink!” theory, and try to practice it whenever I can, I also know that often that moment of creative truth comes after much mulling and ruminating and prodding and cultivating of a previously processed observation or insight.
Sometimes the creative process is just that, a process. And, as with any process, if you leave something out, like a pivotal idea in the thought chain, well, the entire process could be derailed.
There is a simple way to insure against some of this creative waste. When you have that initial idea, whether it’s a fully formed ah ha! or just a fuzzy piece of a thought, write it down. That’s all, just write it down.
Because you could forget it. That’s right, a brilliant idea, and it could simply slip your mind. It happens all the time. I guess the good part is, we don’t remember that we didn’t remember.
The solution is easy enough, just write it down. Or, quicker and easier, just jot it down. Or easier still, simply jot the gist of the idea down. Or, in this digital, connected age, jot a memo on your hand held or laptop, or send yourself a text message, or voice mail or snap a picture.
The wisdom of recording fragments of thoughts is as old as, well, as old as recorded wisdom. There’s an ancient proverb: even the strongest memory is weaker than the palest ink.
Some of the greatest thinkers since the beginning of time were prolific note takers. Da Vinci, as you may know, kept journals and took volumes of notes and made innumerable sketches on his musings and half baked ideas. And he encrypted his thoughts by writing backwards. Do you think he understood the value of documenting ideas?
When the great college basketball coach, Rick Pitino, was interviewed in “Success” magazine he was asked his five secrets of success. Writing things down was one of them. When asked by the interviewer why this was so important he simply replied that he didn’t want to forget them. No one ever said this stuff was pithy.
One of the greatest examples of how recording your ideas can insure that brilliant concepts won’t be lost is the case of Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards writing the song that Rolling Stone magazine and VH1 deems the greatest rock tune of all time - Satisfaction.
I’ve heard the story often, even in an interview with Richards himself. In May of 1965, while lying in a motel bed in Florida, the legendary guitarist/song writer had a riff in his head. He picked up his guitar and played a few notes into his mini cassette recorder (which had recently been invented for moments exactly like this), then, as he tells the story, he awoke the next morning to find the cassette at the end. Upon rewinding it he heard the eight notes that defined the song’s melody, if not an entire generation, then he heard the guitar pick drop to the floor, followed by 30 minutes of snoring.
Believe it or not, just by recording your thoughts; on paper, digitally, whatever, you are more apt to recall the idea, even if the piece of paper gets lost or the digital recording gets corrupted.
When you go through the motions, literally, the motion of writing, or keying in a message, or the activity of recording an audio message, you are having a kinesthetic experience. Your brain is doing it’s own recording of bits of data, giving you more to recall than just the amorphous, indefinite concept. This is why as a professional trainer and presenter I don’t hand out speaker notes at my workshops or speeches. When speakers provide notes, people in an audience take less of their own notes, engaging the mind less, taking less responsibility for remembering the content of the speech. If you take notes yourself, even if you lose them, you’ll retain more of the the message you need to get than if you held onto the whole of the message the speaker thought you should have.
Documenting your ideas is a simple, good habit for anyone serious about their creative efforts. I mean, if a man who has donated his brain to sciene on as many occasions as Keith Richards has can use this method…
And you’re in business. You’re paid to think, to have ideas of value.
How much is an idea worth in business? It’s definitely worth remembering.
“But I never forget important things,” you might protest.
Oh yeah, how about that insurance policy you’ve been looking for since the Pope was an alter boy? Or, worst yet, how about the brilliant business-building idea that you simply don’t know you forgot.
How would you know?
© 2007 Tom Monahan, all rights reserved.
